Balaam_

Xbox’s Concord moment

Have my $5 minimum deposit for preorder in at a few places. If Microsoft/Bethesda butchers their opportunity here by issuing little more than a blank disc with a few mb’s on it, it’s no problem to cancel my orders. After that it’s just a matter of waiting for the steepest discount on the digital version I can find so as to give them as little money as possible.

A bit surprising. I expected Silksong to annihilate everything, but I guess the casuals who only play sports games and wait for the latest iteration outnumber the Silksong fans. That, or perhaps it’s down to release timing and Silksong will shoot up next month.

How is this a “publishing matter”? Sounds more like a development matter to me. Should have been properly implemented at launch to begin with.

$30 a month for access to something I won’t even own, which can be patched/altered/changed/removed without warning while not necessarily even having a disc version to fall back on? No thanks

Fantastic news. If someone with a track record as laughably poor as Pachter’s says this, all my worries are gone. We can conclude Sony is doing just fine.

Any word on whether the game data is contained on-disc? Seems like the sort of thing Bethesda should have mentioned in the post, kind of dodgy they didn’t. I’d be ok if some of the bonus deluxe content required a download, but if the full main game isn’t there in its entirety this is literally pointless.

That prototype PS1 looks like one of those pretentious faucets you’ll find in the bathroom of an upscale restaurant. Still looks better than the PS5’s design :/

Someone should tell Obi-Wan we’ve finally found a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than the Mos Eisley Cantina

Not ideal, but at least they aren’t potentially screwing with the actual trophy system or adding some other stat that will be permanently attached to one’s account. Nothing worse than ‘you have a finite amount of time to unlock this tchotchke, and if you miss the window of opportunity you’re screwed for all eternity’.

Happy with both machines, but good lord are they ugly. Fingers crossed whoever designed the plastic shell has been handed a mop instead, with someone else at the helm of aesthetic design.

I would be, if not for the imminent arrival of Ghost of Yotei. I don’t like splitting my focus between such high calibre releases, so I’m waiting on Silent Hill F.

I have a feeling DigitalFoundry is going to have a field day with this one. Some shots looked really stunning, but I noticed quite a bit of artifacting, fizzling, occlusion issues etc and that was while watching a fairly high quality stream.

@Northern_munkey Darn straight. I’d much prefer to allot the time it would take to ‘git gud’ and eventually prevail on Hellwalker mode to other games in my backlog, ones with respectable, well thought out trophy lists that value people’s time. This is, of course, providing there’s even a trophy for that mode in Phantom Blade—I don’t think any list has leaked yet, so we don’t know for sure either way. The game looks so good though, so even if they botch the list I may still pick it up down the road in the bargain bin and play it on my alt.

If you’re going to go the console route, at least you have choices. You can get the family friendly hybrid with best-in-class first party exclusive support. You can get the de facto 3rd party machine that’s considerably more capable, has some incredible exclusives of its own and full 3rd party support in addition to most of its direct competitor’s games. Or you could get…the less powerful, more expensive console that has next to no true exclusives, dwindling third party support and whose very continued existence is murky.

I found a fix, similar to the Gearbox suggestion but it permanently fixes the problem. First, quit the game.

That’s it. There are no more steps.

If true, fantastic news. As something of a history buff, ever since the original game my sentiment has been ‘I wish that cheesy animus stuff wasn’t part of the game. Seems like an attempt to shoehorn some lame overarching plot to connect everything and ensure the door remains open for prospective sequels’. I say retcon the entire animus stuff and keep them individual adventure stories that explore characters and events from different historical eras, nothing more.

You either die preferring physical media, or live long enough to see yourself become part of the problem.

If they don’t interfere with trophies, they’d be the perfect solution to circumvent awful trophy design. No trophy hunter wants to be forced to repeatedly beat the same game over and over on tedious, ever increasing difficulties. That’s a colossal waste of time that could be more enjoyably spent elsewhere. Had this been an option at launch (and if they don’t interfere with trophy progression), I would unquestionably have used them for that grueling, laborious chore that is the Hard mode (and also those horrendously awful Chadley challenges). Doing them legit provided zero satisfaction or sense of pride; it was all a tedious chore that kept me from getting to other games as soon as I would have liked.

Agreed, these are really great titles. They basically did everything right. Separate trophy SKU’s for the dlc/add on was a god tier management decision. Let those who want them go for them, don’t screw with the 100%+platinum of those who don’t. Win-win.

I’m really only waiting for one specific FF9 related bit of news: whether or not that stupidly brutal ‘jump rope one thousand times ‘ trophy is part of the remake. Without remote play and a pc macro cheater, it essentially makes the current ps1 remastered version’s platinum unobtainable, which is a glaring oversight on the part of the devs. If they pull the same nonsense here, it’s an immediate Pass for me.

Any word on whether that ‘cheat’ mode will be added to PlayStation versions by way of a patch? And whether or not it will affect trophies? I have a handicapped friend who goes for platinums when possible, and he was severely disappointed at the hard mode related FF7R trophy requirements that effectively locked him out of 100%. He’s hoping this will circumvent that poorly thought out, anti-disabled-gamer trophy design. And for those wondering, Yes I’ve had the plat for years and No he wouldn’t just let me unlock it for him. He wants to do it himself.

Usually I can find something each month worth playing, but this time it really is a genuinely bad selection of games.

Regardless of whether the original’s artistic vision was compromised or not, Demon’s Souls Remake is still stunning to this day. The fidelity is out of this world, and performance is surprisingly solid.

I want that truck from Spielberg’s movie Duel as an add-on. That guy knew how to motivate other drivers on the road 😌

Tough decision. The game itself is a fantastic little platformer, but there’s more to the overall experience than just that. The trophy list is a tedious nightmare of a chore for trophy hunter completionists, which really drags down the fun factor. You could design the perfect luxury sports car, but if you decide to make the steering wheel out of razor blades it’ll ruin an otherwise magnificent driving experience. I’d give the game itself an 8 or a 9, the trophy list a 1 or a 2, which means the whole thing averages out somewhere in between.

Should have sprung for the ‘Silver briefcase handcuffed to armed security guard’ priority shipping

I could comment on what I hope the internals will be, or that they hopefully commit to physical media for at least the entirety of the upcoming generation, but instead I’ll throw this out there: I’m praying it won’t look as hideous on the outside as the PS5 models do. I’m hoping whoever designed the ps5’s plastic shell was out the door a long time ago, and that they somehow get the person who designed the PS2 or PS4 launch models back to do the PS6.

It’s been said above by others, I’ll reiterate succinctly: Corporations don’t want us to own anything. A one time purchase is inherently worse than siphoning repeatable revenue out of consumers. If they had their way, we’d be leasing hardware, software, the OS, all games, individual assets within those games, the music, etc etc etc. all for a monthly fee. Great for them, bad for us. They will push the subscription model as far as they’re allowed to, as much as they can possibly get away with, and it will only get worse.

Some trophy hunter/achievement hunter poll questions would be appreciated.

Current state of trophies/achievements on console, whether or not we base purchases off trophy lists, what constitutes an exceptional/exceptionally poor trophy-achievement list, what features we’d like to see added to the system backend (ability to delete games with incomplete trophy lists and not merely games at exactly 0% trophy completion, ability to alphabetize our lists on console, separate sku’s for single player/multiplayer trophies within a given game, etc)

Nope. Seems like a solid platformer, but one look that the tedious grueling grind of a trophy list and I know my time is better spent elsewhere. I could platinum several other games of similar quality in the time it would take to 100% either this or the original.

Disappointing. Heard there was a State of Play possibly happening this month, but if it’s entirely dedicated to a game I’m not interested in, well…there you go. Fingers crossed for the Showcase which probably won’t happen 🫠

@Haruki_NLI it’s all made possible through the power of 🌈LJN

This article looked lonely and needed a comment.

Nope. For me, the performance issues alone make it unplayable, at least for now. Anecdotally, I have a handicapped friend who was super excited for this remake, and had his hopes crushed when he saw the trophy list. He plays using that Sony accessibility controller (forget what it’s called), but also goes for the platinums when possible. He took one look at this game’s list and said ‘How do they expect someone like me to get the plat?’ It seems the devs weren’t considering differently abled gamers when they settled on the trophy criteria.

Since when does making something more difficult make it more fun or a better game? By that logic, just program it to be literally impossible to beat and then it should be the greatest game ever made.

Give this team a raise. I have a handicapped friend who also enjoys trophy hunting, and this list had him breathe a sigh of relief. He’s limited to using that strange looking Sony accessibility controller, but seeing that the devs account for differently abled gamers by allowing the various in-game assists to count toward the platinum, he’ll be able to earn the trophy just like anyone else.

Can’t wait for the accompanying AVGN video.

The good news is, based off how quickly they patched Oblivion Remastered into a playable state we can expect them to fix MGS3 Delta in about…never.

No interest. They don’t value my time as a trophy hunter completionist, then no sale. In the time it might take to practice enough to ‘git gud’, I could feasibly platinum a number of other, better titles sitting in my backlog.

It seems some developers don’t understand that casuals and average gamers don’t care about trophies (or don’t even know what they are), and that the only people who truly care about them are trophy hunters. Curating a game’s trophy list in tedious, needlessly difficult ways isn’t appealing to trophy hunters who want clean, concise lists so we can move on to the next game.

Pity they didn’t segregate the single player and multiplayer portions of the game into separate trophy lists. I would have loved to run through the campaign again after all this time, but I won’t be playing this due to some of the absurd anti-trophy-hunter multiplayer criteria. Sadly, since they mash those trophies into the main list like with most games, it means I bypass it.

Lots of great titles. Of the ones I played, I highly recommend Death’s Door, Tunic and The Messenger.

I still prefer no trophy support to bad trophy support.

Day 1 purchase easy. I only pray they don’t f up the trophy list. It should be alright, with no multiplayer or extraneous modes having been mentioned so far to my knowledge. If they nail the trophy list with one similar to, say, Stellar Blade’s excellent list, this could be a GotY contender.

🥱

Wake me up when a single player tentpole franchise makes the jump. That would be significant, whereas anything GaaS or multiplayer centric is only logical to want everywhere it can be for player count purposes.

Pachter has a very shotgun style of analysis; one of his predictive pellets is bound to hit the mark if he makes enough prognostications. I’d agree losing House and Layden wasn’t great, but knowing Ryan and Hulst would be that lackluster in advance isn’t realistic.

I haven’t been able to verify whether or not playing one of these game trials adds trophies to one’s list or not. There doesn’t seem to be any official documentation (if there is, I can’t find it) and looking at it from the outside it appears it could go either way. It is the full game you’re trying, and that save data will carry over should you choose to buy it, so I’m leaning toward it potentially unlocking trophies as you play the trial—in which case, that’s a No Go. A true demo would be much more preferable in that if one ends up hating the game, no trophies would be unlocked.

Can anyone verify if these game trials unlock trophies? I don’t think Sony allows users to play the trial on anything except the specific account with PS Premium, so the method of ‘pre-testing’ by playing on an alt account likely won’t work.

I buy mostly physical and rarely use the digital storefront, but when I do it’s a fine enough experience. Still, this is nice to see. Perhaps after they polish up the store they’ll move on to overhauling the trophy system. I’d like to see the option to alphabetize our trophy list (we had this ability on PS3 but it was inexplicably removed for PS4 and never returned). The ‘last game you earned a trophy in gets bumped to the top of the list’ method is awful. I’d also like to see the option for users to permanently remove a game with a partially complete trophy percentage from our lists. Not just ‘hide’, and not just for games at exactly 0%. A full on erasure for games anywhere from 1%-99% trophy completion. This would resolve numerous issues, such as glitched trophies, server shutdowns which cause unobtainable trophies, and even something as simple as a developer’s bad decision in making a trophy far too difficult or tedious for the average person to acquire.

Whoever made the post, after getting chewed out by Chief People Officer of Sony Pictures, Stacy Green:

Well excuuuuuuse me, Princess!

Physical copy announced through LRG. Not a fan of LRG, but unless someone else is offering a disc copy, I’m there.